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Sports of The Times; Tax Is Funny Money For Wealthy Owners

BERNIE WILLIAMS thought he was back in the 60's. That's what the Yankee center fielder said in Kansas City on April 30 when 2,000 fans staged a polite little protest at the ball park.

Big deal. Nobody occupied the infield, trying to turn it into a People's Park. No fans chained themselves to first base. No tear gas. No billy clubs. No arrests. Call that a protest? Call that the 60's?

Still, the fans chanted and carried banners and even walked out during the game to draw attention to the staggering salary gap in baseball -- the Yankees' payroll being around $85 million and the Royals' being around $23 million.

The Royals promptly won two of four from the Yankees, one of the moral victories of this young season. Another sweet little moment was the Cuban state-supported amateurs scampering around the bases Monday night in a 12-6 victory in Baltimore.

Politics aside, the Cuban victory was one for the underdogs -- guys who get paid a few pesos a month, plus living benefits, to play this game with panache. They don't drive fancy cars, wear designer clothing or display valuable jewelry, but they sure as heck humiliated a team with a current payroll of $78 million.

Showing he was paying attention, Ray Miller, the manager of the Orioles, suggested his players had dogged it against the Cubans. The ugly loss probably delayed Miller's firing by a week or two, since the owner, Peter Angelos, probably realized he had done his team a disservice.

Angelos should have known that satiated major leaguers drawing seven-digit salaries would not have enough imagination to want to hustle against the Cubans on what could have been a rare night off.

By a delightful coincidence, it was also the week in which the Orioles got their luxury-tax bill for the year -- $4,067,305 for having one of the top five payrolls in the sport.

That's right. It will cost Angelos a mere $4 million extra to pay his leaden mix of weary Cal Ripken, sullen Albert Belle, over-the-hill Will Clark and a pitching staff that produces rockets that evoke visions of that fabled night at Fort McHenry.

For a huge swath of fans in downscale television markets, that is going to be the rooting interest for the foreseeable future. Since only two teams can reach the World Series every year, most fans must learn to love watching rich egomaniacs fail.

It will have to suffice for fans in Montreal or Pittsburgh to watch the Dodgers ($5.1 million), Yankees ($4.2 million), Orioles ($4 million), Braves ($772,506) and Mets ($525,156) settle their tabs, like rich drunks paying for the champagne that made some of them sick.

Even that luxury-tax system runs out after this season, to be replaced by -- well, nothing. The new commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, has lamented the disparity between the haves and the have-nots, and he should know because his family owns the Milwaukee Brewers, a distinctly small-market franchise that cannot keep up with those in the richest cable markets.

Baseball leaders show no capacity for approaching the problem with any serious revenue-sharing. The National Football League, on the other hand, practices the kind of collectivism that might even put a smile on the face of the West's last Communist, Fidel Castro.

The socialist owners of the N.F.L. have long since pooled their television revenue -- $58 million per team last year -- which means a franchise can still exist in that anachronistic Wisconsin burg of Green Bay. And after a decade of watching franchises depart the biggest television markets for ambitious smaller markets, the N.F.L. acted on that, too.

When the New England Patriots toyed with an irresponsibly generous offer from shabby Hartford, the league averted the double disaster of leaving a major TV market and saddling a lesser one with a monumental debt. Its idea was to finance an interest-free loan to help pay for a new stadium in Massachusetts (and also keep Hartford from further deficits).

All sports owners and leagues mooch on communities for gigantic tax breaks and new facilities, but baseball seems committed to leaving its small-market teams out there to suffer.

There always were bad teams, but they often were the product of bad ownership. Nowadays you could have the best management in baseball, and if you're in a small market, tough.

Those sad fans in Kansas City can remember an enlightened owner like Ewing Kauffman competing with the Yankees, but he is long gone, and so is the concept.

Fans are now reduced to heckling the Yankees as the symbol of a rotten system. Plus, rooting for the Cubans to show up the bland, wealthy Orioles. It's a cheap thrill, but it's all they have.